There’s something special about red heads.

Three weeks ago, I was at the hairdresser, and the woman in the chair next to me had red hair. She was also reading a book about the history of red hair and red-headedness throughout the world, from which she shared a few interesting facts.

I’ve previously mentioned that between 60-70% of my music collection is music for studying or writing to.

In truth, it’s probably closer to 80-85%.

The reasons for this are obvious to me. I began collecting music in earnest when I first started having money of my own for some luxury items. This corresponded with my first entering university, which saw me spending the majority of my time outside of class studying and completing assignments.

2017 has been shit in a lot of ways, but not with regards to music.

I’ve always considered myself rather modest and minimal when it comes to my consumption of music.

True, I have music playing from almost the moment I wake each day until about half an hour after I close my eyes for bed. Every night, I listen in the dark to a sleep mix I’ve created to help lull me off to dreamland.

Some days – some years – retreating to a deserted island sounds like a mighty fine proposition.

Of course, it would have to be a tropical island. Being one of those people who is always cold, spending a year on an island in the Arctic – or worse, the Antarctic – would create a whole new set of problems.

I’ve been snow camping before during my great outdoorsy days, but never in -34°C (-29°F).

To be honest, it initially struck me as absurd, the thought of creating a soundtrack for a novel, let alone my own novel-in-progress.

After all, a book is, well, a book. It is static and non-visual beyond the fact of seeing a print or e-book’s typewritten words.

To me, it made little sense trying to apply techniques used in visual arts (most notably motion pictures) to a format that most definitely isn’t a picture (this despite the fact that very good books can indeed succeed in creating vivid pictures in the reader’s mind).